TFL advise Taxi Drivers refuse to take a card rather than use an alternative Payment Device

Today has seen outages on the O2 network, the O2 website has the following Service Status inormation.

The network issue we are currently experiencing remains a top priority for us and we are working as quickly as possible to fix the issues.

All O2 technical teams are working closely with one of our third party suppliers who has identified a global software issue in their system which has impacted data services.

We believe other mobile operators around the world are also affected.

We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience.

Normally a mobile telephone network outage would not affect a Taxi drivers daily life, but since October 2016 London Taxis have been compelled to accept card payments.

A lot of these card payment systems use the O2 network for their data connections, so an outage affects taxi drivers being able to accept card payments.

TFL have posted a Tweet stating that they are aware of the data outage on the O2 Network affecting some mobile payment devices and affected drivers should advise customers before accepting a fare and offer to take them to a ATM so that they can pay by cash.

The piece of advice that is considered unbelievable is that TFL state that “Under no circumstances should drivers use an alternative, non-fixed card payment device.”